1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid supplying apparatus for supplying liquid, for example, such as ink, and a liquid ejecting apparatus including the liquid supplying apparatus.
2. Related Art
An ink jet type printer (hereinafter, in some cases, abbreviated as a “printer”) is widely known as a liquid ejecting apparatus that ejects liquid to a target such as paper. In the related art, in such a printer, there is a printer which includes a liquid supplying apparatus using a pulsating type pump such as a diaphragm type pump in order to supply a liquid ejecting head that ejects ink (liquid) with ink (for example, JP-A-2009-160912).
In addition, in the pulsating type pump, in order to alternately perform a suction operation of sucking ink from a liquid supply source such as an ink cartridge and a discharging operation of discharging ink sucked by the suction operation toward the liquid ejecting head side, while performing the suction operation, the supplying of ink is temporarily stopped. For that reason, in order to supply ink toward the liquid ejecting head side even while performing the suction operation, the liquid supplying apparatus of JP-A-2009-160912 is provided with a buffer chamber that stores ink discharged from the pump.
However, in order to perform choke cleaning as maintenance of the liquid ejecting head, the printer of JP-A-2009-160912 is provided with a choke valve (a differential pressure valve) for blocking an ink flow path that supplies ink from the pump to the liquid ejecting head. Moreover, in the case of performing the choke cleaning, the choke valve is closed by a negative pressure to be applied from opening sides of nozzles provided in the liquid ejecting head so as to eject ink, thereby blocking the ink flow path.
Herein, in the printer of JP-A-2009-160912, since the choke valve is placed between the pump and the buffer chamber, when the choke valve is closed to block the ink flow path, the inner portion of the buffer chamber also receives the negative pressure. Furthermore, in order to change a storage capacity and pressurize the stored ink, the buffer chamber is provided with a movable section such as a movable wall constituted by a film member or the like having flexibility. For that reason, there is a problem in that the movable section of the buffer chamber is strongly attracted in the direction of reducing the storage capacity at each choke cleaning, and a great load is applied to the movable section.
Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 17, such a printer 110 is provided with a cartridge holder 123 for mounting an ink cartridge 122 to an upper side of a carriage 121 supporting a liquid ejecting head 120. Furthermore, in the case of feeding a sheet of paper P which becomes a target from a rear side of the printer 110, a transport mechanism 125 for transporting the paper P to the rear sides of the carriage 121 and a liquid supplying apparatus 124 is placed. In addition, a pump 126 and a buffer chamber 127 constituting the liquid supplying apparatus 124 are placed so as to be aligned vertically for each color of ink at the rear side of the cartridge holder 123, as shown in FIG. 18.
Moreover, in the printer, a reduction in size of the whole apparatus can be promoted by reducing the size of the ink cartridge. However, there is a problem in that, if the pump and the buffer chamber are placed at the rear side of the cartridge holder so as to be aligned vertically, even if the ink cartridge is reduced in size, it is difficult to reduce the height of the apparatus.